Hellfire Citadel: Protection Warrior Tips & Tricks

[Sajakain 104]

This will be the primary discussion thread for Protection Warriors in Hellfire Citadel. For the most part, this thread will be a collaboration of useful information to make your life easier as you take on the Citadel. If you have anything to contribute, please do so and we'll be sure to add it to this thread.



 

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1. Hellfire Assault:

Normal/heroic:

• Wind and Thunder is a particularly useful glyph. It can help immensely with add pick up since the adds tend to spawn fairly spread out.
• Be selective in your user of Thunder Clap. If adds are spawning soon (there are orange swirls on the ground) you will need to save your Thunder Clap to pick up the adds when they spawn and having to wait a few seconds before doing so because There Clap is on CD can make the pickup more difficult because the adds will scatter.
• The Hulking Berserkers shouldn't cause much of an issue, but watch out for their stacking debuff. It makes not only the Berserkers more dangerous, but all other melee damage as well.

Mythic:

• Hulking Berserkers are now a significant threat.
• Do not tank the first Berserker and Mar'tak at the same time.
• Be very aware during add spawns. Any adds that you do not pick up will run toward the canons and start attacking them. This can easily cause a wipe.
• You can interrupt the Fel Casters. If you use the Rude Interruption glyph, you can get some extra damage out.
• Single target focusing adds that matter is more important than AoE. Take Ravager, Bloodbath, and Dragon Roar as your talents.
• Again, the Hulking Berserker's debuff affects ALL melee damage taken. With a few stacks, even the melees from the Engineers become dangerous. Make ample use of your externals.

Trinkets: Anzu's Cursed Plume and the best DPS trinket you have. Assault can hit hard, but it's manageable with CDs and active mitigation.

 

2. Iron Reaver:

Normal/heroic:

• Ravager, Bloodbath, and Dragon Roar should be your talent choices.
• Help your team kill the bombs during the air phase.
• I prefer to run the Artillery out and Heroic Leap or Charge back in. The taunt timings are tight for two tanks, but entirely doable.

Mythic:

• It is essential that you have at least 50% health left after taking the Artillery hit. You need to be able to take a few melee swings when you get back to the boss. Your healers most likely will not be able to top you off before you have to taunt for your cotank to run out.
• If you have Worldbrealer's Resolve, use a SHIELD BLOCK (not Barrier!) Right at the end of the boss' Artillery cast. The ability had a bit of travel time, so waiting until the cast finished gives the most out of your block. Get back to the boss as soon as possible and taunt.
• If you do not have Worldbreaker's Resolve, save your rage. If you use a Shield Barrier, you will only soak about 40k damage and it is more important to be able to have a Shield Block up when you taunt the boss. Make sure to use your external and personal CDs as needed to ensure that the Artillery does not stop you below half health.

 

Trinkets: Go for your two best stamina trinkets. I personally used Imbued Stone Sigil and Tyrant's Decree. As long as you can stay fairly high health before going out for Artillery, you'll get a lot of mileage from Tyrant's. You can also swap Imbued Stone Sigil for Worldbreaker's Resolve.

 

3. Kormrok:

The fight is similar enough on all difficulties that I will not be separating the tips out by difficulty.

• The critical skill for tanks on this fight is planning where you are when the tank abilities hit you. Make sure you are not going to be hit into a pool by Swat. Make sure you are near the stack point of your raid for Foul Crush or your melee will not be in the right location for their own Hands and you will likely cause a wipe. Make sure you are at the edges of the room for Explosive Burst.
• Keep your cotank as your focus target. Taunt as soon as you see a tank debuff appear on them. A late taunt can easily cause their death.
• Make sure your healers know to top you off before Explosive Burst detonates. They may not know that you cannot perform any actions (not even Enraged Regeneration).

Trinkets: Anzu's and your best DPS trinket.

 

4. Kilrogg Deadeye:

• If the blood add gets close to the boss, pull the boss away from it to give your raid time to kill it.
• You can use either Shield Block or Shield Barrier to prevent yourself from taking a debuff from taking the Shred Armor debuff. Make sure you have at least 20 rage.
• With the exception of Death Throes, you will take no damage while the boss is casting. The boss casts a LOT. Use this to your advantage. Remember that any Shield Barrier that goes unused is wasted rage. Watch for his casts and use Heroic Strike to avoid capping raid, but feel free to put damage on the boss while he's casting and have enough rage to use defensive abilities when he stops.
• If the Shred Armor timer ends close to when another ability is going to happen, the other ability (or abilities) will happen first. At times, but not every time, he will melee you once between ability casts.
• Use Shield Barrier to soak Death Throes in order to help your healers out. It may not be dangerous damage for you, but your healers are busy.
• If the boss is close to the ring at the end of the room (near where he spawns) and he is facing the ring during Visions of Death, the ability clipping on the ring will bug the ability and prevent raid members from going down. This will likely wipe your raid.
• You can use Rude Interruption to get some extra damage by interrupting the big add.
• Use Ravager, Bloodbath, and Dragon Roar.
• Use Glyph of Cleave.

Trinkets: Anzu's and your best DPS trinket.

 

5. Hellfire High Council:

For tanking Dia Darkwhisper:

• Use Rude Interruption and Glyph of Spell Reflection.
• Use Ravager, Bloodbath, and Dragon Roar.
• Dia has two "phases": her casting "phase" where she casts Void Built, Mark of the Necromancer, and Reap, and her melee "phase" where she transforms and melts you for about 20 seconds solid. During her casting "phase" you want to interrupt the first cast, Spell Reflect the second, and interrupt again when Pummel is off CD. From here, she will go into her melee "phase." When she starts casting again, use the exact same order of abilities. This allows you to have a very high uptime on Rude Interruption and take the fewest number of casts.
• You can get Mark of the Necromancer. If you have it when she casts Reap, make sure you are positioned well or you can prevent yourself from reaching the boss.
• When using Shield Barrier to soak her casts, use a Barrier on every other cast. This will help to give your healers more predictable time to heal you up. (As opposed to soaking two in a row, if you have the rage).
• When using a Shield Barrier to soak a cast, use it right after her last cast ends in order to maximize your Shield Barrier size. Your Resolve will reduce about 5-10 in the cast time and the difference may be small, but your healers will need the help on the harder difficulties.

Trinkets: Anzu's and Imbued Stone Sigil. Anzu's gives you good damage reduction for Dia's melee phases and Sigil gives you enough of a health buffer overall. If you're not tanking Dia, you could swap the Sigil for a DPS trinket.

 

6. Gorefiend:

• The boss hits surprisingly hard. Do not be afraid to call for CDs even on normal.
• Decide with your cotank who is speaking which side of the room during Feast of Souls so you're not running out needlessly. Try to maximize your time on the boss for this phase. Stop soaking souls when you have 8 seconds left before Feast of Souls ends since they will not reach the boss anyway.
• When taking the add in the stomach, make sure you're near the center so you can leave as soon as the add hits 70%.

Trinkets: Anzu's and your best DPS trinket.

 

7. Shadow-Lord Iskar:

• Make sure your raid knows if you get targeted for Winds. You need to get the Eye quickly.
• If you are not taking, but are above 90% that on the boss, you will probably get selected for Chakram.
• Save your offensive CDs for air phases. Make sure to take Bladestorm, Dragon Roar, and Ravager.

Trinkets: Anzu's and your best DPS trinket.

 

8. Socrethar the Eternal:

• The damage from Reverberating Blows is pretty trivial if you have people soaking it with you. A Shield Barrier should be all you need, but err on the side of caution.
• If you're in the robot, make sure you're making the best possible use of it. You should always be active, whether you're meleeing the boss or adds, putting down fire, or using other abilities. Your damage in the robot is quite high and your raid will depend on it.

Trinkets: Anzu's and your best DPS trinket.

 

9. Tyrant Velhari:

• You will want to use stamina trinkets for this fight. The debuff in the second phase gets brutal.
• Watch the positioning of the add in the first phase. You take less damage if you just move out of the way of it's frontal cone ability than get hit and then have to move out of the flame geyser that spawns under you when you get hit by an ability.
• You will likely need to call for externals when the debuff in the second phase stacks high. Err on the side of caution.

Trinkets: Anzu's and your best DPS trinket or Kilrogg's Unseeing Eye. Make the judgement based on your healers.

 

10. Fel Lord Zakuun:

• He hits surprisingly hard in his unarmed phase. Do not be afraid to call for externals.
• When you are disembodied, set yourself up next to the point you will be exiting early and avoid mechanics with minimal movements. Announce when you're about to come back to the normal realm.
• When you are within a few seconds on coming back to the normal realm, try to stop moving. If you are moving when you come back, you may end up taking your own waves and killing yourself.

Trinkets: Anzu's and your best DPS trinket.

 

11. Xhul'horac:
 

• Use Shield Barrier for every fel/shadow strike.
• You can use Shockwave top sun the imps when they spawn top prevent them from getting casts off. Dragon Roar can also delay the cast. Either way, you do need top be helping with the adds as well.
• The meme damage is not insignificant, so make sure you have a good rotation with your Shield Blocks and Barriers.
•  While the two big adds are still alive, they should be your DPS priority, but watch your threat.
• One the big adds are dead and the boss is switching elements after every fel strike and shadow slash, make sure you are taunting add soon as the ability goes out. Know your color (green debuff vs. purple debuff) and taunt when the boss switches. Don't leave it on your cotank and risk killing the raid.
• If you did forget to taunt and the wrong-colored cast is about to go out on your cotank, you can still taunt. The cat dots not fixate on the original target.

Trinkets: Worldbreaker's Resolve and Anzu's for heroic. Worldbreaker's and Sigil for mythic.

 

12. Mannoroth:

• You absolutely want Double Time on this fight and Death From Above is not recommended. Having a longer maximum Leap distance could save your life if your reaction time is slower for some reason.
• Unending Rage can be very useful. Ideally you want to have enough rage to put up a Shield Block for Glaive Thrust, then use Revenge or Shield Slam, then have a full Shield Barrier for Massive Blast. Thus, having Unending Rage sites you to do that much more easily without saying rage. Remember: a fluffy kitten dies every time you waste rage.
• Shield Barrier counts as active mitigation for Glaive Thrust, but I prefer Shield Block. That way, you should still have active mitigation up in case you send up taking the second Glaive Thrust after the Massive Blast.

Trinkets: Worldbreaker's and Anzu's.

13. Archimonde:

• Save CDs for Doomfires and Deathcallers.
• Make sure to get the orb to immune the shadow damage as much as possible. Be aware that when Phase 1 ends, you lose the immunity even if you have time left on the buff. If you have several stacks from the add, it will hurt.
• In phase 2, make sure you give your ranges and healers at least 10 yds between the boss and the fire.
• When you get vanished in phase 3, try to keep some of your accompanying people between you and the edges out the room so you don't get fixated. If you do get fixated by a void star, make sure kite it. If you're kiting a void star when the adds dies, you can click the exit portal from anywhere in the room.
• In phase 3, when the infernals spawn, make sure to have one and only one on you. Taunt the others in as yours dies.

Trinkets: Anzu's and either your best DPS trinket or Sigil if you need it.

[Kuwadora 0]

Hellfire Council: Dia Darkwhisper's Void Bolt can be reflected.

 

Xhul'horac: Shockwave comes off CD in time for each spawn of imps to get one (assuming you hit at least 3, this is easy with the boss and the big add nearby also); this is excellent for stopping all 3 casts.

[Estarriol 167]

Sorry formatting is atrocious. I've been editing at work on my tablet. Rage, Saj, feel free to format :x

[Estarriol 167]

Alright, finally have tips up for all bosses. Feel free to submit logs and I'll get on those.

[Pepperkeanen 0]

Very nice guide! 
Could you describe into more detail which trinkets you use on different bosses? 
I normally just use Plume and Class trinket unless there is no magic damage at all. 
Though i see a lot of very good warriors using Warlords Unseeing Eye? Is it any good for anyother bosses than Tyrant? 

 

Also when is it no longer worth going for the 4-piece set bonus? 

Ty

[Estarriol 167]

Sure thing! I'll try to get to that later tonight. Thanks for asking questions, I've been so lonely!

[Estarriol 167]

Trinkets have been added.

[Meatblade 0]

Just for a couple more updates...

 

The BoA Tank trinket works great on all of the Demon bosses (Tyrant, Mannoroth, Archimonde, etc) to absorb those big hits.

 

For Mannoroth, having Bladestorm is a God send. Right before the Glaive Thrust, use Shield Barrier, BoA trinket, then Bladestorm. You forego the ticking DoT from the Glaive, take 0 damage from the Blast, and Bladestorm keeps you from being knocked back (which is great for Phase 4).

 

If anyone wants to see my tank, check out Meatblade - Zuluhed Horde.555555